Quote Colors

The Quote Colors extension for Mozilla Thunderbird, the Mozilla Mail & Newsgroup client and SeaMonkey adds an user interface for configuring text and background colors for different quote levels when displaying messages (up to 5 levels currently).
The settings apply to mail and newsgroups messages, either in plain text or HTML. For graphical quoting (HTML style) you can adjust the appearance of the borders around the quoted paragraphs. Some other basic message options are available, too.

This extension and the default colors are based on a tip from the Thunderbird Help site where different quote level colors were realised via userContent.css.

Quote Colors is also listed at addons.mozilla.org (AMO) where you can read what others think about it and leave your own comments.

Latest News

11/14/2009Quote Colors 0.3 released
Besides code cleanup and many small fixes and internal improvements, Quote Colors 0.3 offers one new feature visible to users: quote level colors will now be repeated once after the fifth level. This allows visual distinction of quotes up to level 10 now.
Quote Colors 0.3 is compatible with Thunderbird 2.0 and 3.0, SeaMonkey 1.x and 2.0. The Mozilla suite is no longer supported since it's outdated by now and replaced by the SeaMonkey suite.

10/26/2009Quote Colors 0.3 (Beta 2) released
This new beta version features a lot internal changes for improving code quality. While it does not introduce new features, it now supports Thunderbird 2, Thunderbird 3 and SeaMonkey 2. If no bugs are found, it will be released as final version 0.3, so please try it out and report anything that may look strange or broken.

09/28/2009Quote Colors 0.3 (Beta 1) released
Unfortunately, the last two beta versions of Thunderbird 3 (Beta 3+4) introduced some internal changes which broke Quote Colors. All of you who are already using these latest versions are invited to try out Quote Colors 0.3 Beta 1. Thanks for your feedback!Please note: this beta version only features compatibility fixes for Tb3 (no new features). Thus, it cannot be used with Thunderbird 2 or SeaMonkey 2.

06/21/2009Quote Colors 0.2.9 released
Quote Colors 0.2.9 was released to add support for the current development releases of Thunderbird 3 and SeaMonkey 2.

Known issues and limitations

Color quote levels when replying to messages (compose window) would be a nice addition, but it's not as easy to implement as in the message window. Maybe it's not even possible with a extension, I'm not sure atm. Don't hold your breath for that feature.

When using this extension, the quote color defined in Tools > Options > Display will not be used (this is by design, there's no need for it)

Different colors for "only" five quote levels can be configured. After the fifth level, the colors will be repeated once (level 6 = level 1, …, level 10 = level 5). Starting with level 10, colors and formatting don't change anymore! I think it's a rare case that anyone receives/reads messages with more than 10 quote levels. However, maybe there will be some kind of automatic that deals with this in a future release.

Credits

Scott MacGregor (parts of his offline extension, valuable help and tips)

David Tenser (idea, default color scheme)

piro (uninstall/unregister script) [used in version 0.1 and in Mozilla version]

Karsten Düsterloh (advice and ideas for printing support)

all translators, complete list can be found in About dialog

others I may have forgot...

Contact

Feedback is very appreciated.
You can post your message to the Mailing list or mail me directly. In case of questions, please make sure that they are not covered by the user guide or the FAQ and don't appear in the known issues list above.